Tuesday, January 26, 2010

That glass that fell and broke on the sidewalk yesterday? Les Epperson with the City of Charlotte's solid waste services saw the blogpost and called late yesterday to say he'd send a crew to clean it up and look into what happened. We had a small chat about the famous building in Boston whose glass windows showered passersby – the John Hancock Tower, designed by I.M. Pei and Henry Cobb. Eventually all its window panes had to be replaced, costing $5 million to $7 million.

Epperson called back today. "The glass had the consistency of automobile glass," he said. It didn't have a lot of sharp shards, as a glass window from a building would. He thinks it came from a vehicle. Whew!

And to whoever commented that it was not the brightest thing for me to go stand where the glass fell and look up, I must confide that as I was doing so, I thought, "This is not the brightest thing I could be doing ..." But journalists are like cats - we can't switch off the curiosity.

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Mary Newsom is an Observer associate editor and op-ed columnist who's been covering growth, neighborhoods, urban design, sustainable development and related topics since 1995. In "The Naked City" you'll read her take on those topics and others.

Just wondering where those curious cat journalists are when our economy is being intentionally collapsed(Cloward and Piven). Do you realize that "We The People" will be coming for the journalists, as well? The gig is up.

Anonymous 7:04PM, My goodness that sounds threatening. You need to stop and think, Mary is highly educated and very a very experienced journalist. She been with the Observer since 1995 and has survived layoffs. She must be the best of the best.

The irony is if the glass were whole, would it be half empty or half full. After being swept up was it recycled!? I think that Mary, as an investigative journalist, should follow the trail of the broken glass.

7:54, what is "threatining" is our leaders deliberately collapsing the economy while the media runs cover. The reaction you will see when the average Joe finally wakes up from their reality TV induced coma to see their new reality will be rage.

First, kudos to Larry for a great posting. We need more clever retorts here. Much appreciated.

Second, this just in: President Obama is expected to announce tonight that he will put a freeze on street car funding and other NON-ESSENTIAL BOONDOGGLES in order to reduce the deficit. (His first smart move).

Third - Mary, how does an intelligent, reasonable guy like Mark Washburn keep his job at the Observer? His tounge-in-cheek jab at the trolley caper in today's Local section of the Observer is a must-read classic. Are you sure that you and Taylor Batten are not adopted?

Been on the road most of this month and I haven't had time to finish my goals for the year. Here we go:

1) turn everyone into a mass transit supporter

2) get people to read at least 1 book (without pictures) this year

3) get people to, in no particular order, think before acting, spell-check before sending and to read something (anything) before writing

4) for my Windows/PC "friends"; get them to ditch those brain killing, soul defeating machines and buy a Mac

That's it. I think the first three are within reach. But that last one, that's a tough one. It's going to be hard, hard to get people to give up being a slave. Heck, look how long it took for us to get rid of slavery. I'm convinced though that if more people, especially those who post here regularly, if they start using Macs, they will quit eatin' tater tots, stop cussin', stop hatin', the left side and right side of their brain will start working together and help them, maybe for the first time, produce a coherent thought.

Hallelujah! Oops. Got carried away.

So as George W. Bush would say, my last goal is hard. But I've always been told to create goals that make you stretch.

Consultant, I am greatly offended. Both sides of my brain work fine. I am in the middle of a book with no pictures. I don't cuss in my posts here. And I love tater tots!!

(DISCLAIMER: The preceding paragraph was a tongue-in-cheek, satirical response.)

Of course, with your views being more liberal and mine being extremely conservative, we won't agree very often. But that's OK; civil debate is a great thing.

And while I agree we need more mass transit, I'll never support the nonsensical streetcar.

To the mean-spirited, is-this-all-you-have-to-write-about posters (and all the others who love to express mean-spirited posts here, if you don't like the blog, don't read it. Mary's a big girl and her feelings won't get hurt.

Now, back to the glass. I'm still curious how the glass "appeared" on the sidewalk. From the words written in the 2 posts about this, the best guess I can come up with is that someone's windshield popped completely out as the vehicle passed the Gantt center. I've seen that happen in NASCAR races, but not on city streets. I imagine there are other legitimate theories as to where the glass came from. I'd like to hear what actually happened...

About Mary and The Naked City blog

Mary Newsom is an Observer associate editor and op-ed columnist who's been covering growth, neighborhoods, urban design, sustainable development and related topics since 1995. In "The Naked City" you'll read her take on those topics and others.